


Tempering

by jll



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Rick's personality changes are getting old, there's one curse word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jll/pseuds/jll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mid-season 5 break. Daryl's quiet and Rick is ruthless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempering

Rick used to entertain the idea that with enough patience and words, any problem could be solved. He’s long since given up on that. Either way, he’s not sure how to fix this. Maggie has Glenn, but Daryl hasn’t got anyone that close. He has Carol and himself, but neither of them has done much good. Rick needs Daryl out of this state and more importantly, Daryl needs to be out of it.

  
There is no use in cornering the man. He hasn’t said a word in two days. Trying to force conversation will only prolong that. But waiting may take too long. So Rick has to create a middle ground. He waits until it’s Daryl’s turn on watch and sits with him. Neither of them says anything for awhile, instead listening to Maggie’s restlessness in on e of the cars. For the time being, she and Glenn are off night watches. She’s started to wake herself up sobbing. Rick can’t blame her, based on his reaction when Lori passed.

“She’ll be tired tomorrow.” It’s a safe start. Daryl doesn’t have to answer back. It makes it that much more surprising when he does.

“We all will. Not enough food.”

“Plus watch. You’ve been on two nights in a row. You should sleep tomorrow.”

“Won’t help.” He takes a drink of water and hands the bottle to Rick. “Can feel it stuck to my bones. Sleep for year, an’ I’m always gonna be tired.”

“Give it time.”

“It ain’t what’s happened. Not entirely, at least. I ain’t been rested for years. Thought it would go away when things got good at the prison.” He’s speaking as if he expected Rick to ask at some point. Rick lets him keep going. “Then Carol was gone. Lost you too. Should’ve known that getting’ the two’ve you back would bring consequences. Can’t have nothing without losing some.”

There’s no sense denying that in the world they live in. They’ve already lost so many. “Maybe it’ll be different one day.” It’s weak and has no conviction behind it, but Rick can’t do much better. They have no food and the coming day will empty their water supply. Daryl will probably go hunting, but he’s got a look about him like a buck could wander by and he wouldn’t notice.

“Not for us. ‘Nother few years and we’ll be old men.” He pauses a sign that he’s got a though but it debating whether to say it or not.  
Rick just watches the road through the trees. Either the conversation is over or Daryl will finish it on his own. It used to be easier to bleed a rock than get him to talk., so there’s no point in pushing now. Hell, the man has done more talking that originally planned.

A couple bats fly overhead, looking for the first of the spring’s insects. The weather will continue getting warm and the walkers will thaw. They aren’t ready. They have no shelter, no reliable source of food or water, and they’ve lost their last medical profession to both cannibals and walkers. They won’t last long like this. With the way the last two homes ended, there might not ever be a solution.

“I was happy it happened.”

“What?” Rick’s caught up in thinking about what wild fruits might be coming into season. There’s not much he can place Daryl’s words with.

“The…” He makes a few short hand gestures before dropping them between his knees and hanging his head forward. “The whole ‘end of the world’ and walker thing.”

“You were happy that everything went to the dead?” It comes out hard and mocking, the way he spoke to Gareth and the Grady Police officers. Daryl’s entire body tenses up, and Rick tries to play fair. “What part of that could have made you happy?”

“ ‘Cause of the people.” Daryl shrugs and doesn’t say anything else. If it wasn’t his turn on watch he would have left already.

“All of them?” Daryl snorts and looks further off to the side. If Rick were still how he used to be, he would be able to realize what Daryl is trying to say. But that part of him is gone, from the moment he found his people caged like animals. He can’t go back. This is how he will be. Otherwise they’ll fall apart. Someone has to be ruthless and he’ll be damned before he lets anyone else take that burden.

“Daryl, I just have a hard time seeing how this world, the only one my daughter will know, could be better than the one left behind.” He tries to make it less sarcastic and more explanatory.

“She’s gonna be surrounded by people who love her. Not everyone had that before y’all.”

Sometime Rick forgets that just because the old world didn’t have the dead at your doorstep, it wasn’t always a good place. He’d seen glimpses of the other side as a cop, but his work is all but forgotten now. Briefly, the fear on Sophia’s face whne she was her father comes to mind. Carol’s injuries at the quarry. Hershel’s dead first wife. The way be Merle beat Daryl at Woodbury, as if they had never met.

“Fair enough. Why brings this up now?” The earth over Beth’s body hasn’t settle yet and there’s no time to sit around and works things out.

“Maybe this is the punishment.” He chews on the edge of his thumb. “Beth was the best of all of us. Ain’t no other reason for this to happen.”

“There’s no reason. Just how things happened.” Rick is still speaking flatly, but he leans of the side to press their shoulders together. “All we can do is survive. We aren’t losing anyone else.”

“For the first time all night, Daryl looks at him. “Don’t matter. You’re already gone.” He stands up. “Abraham’s turn on watch.”

He’s missed something again. It’s knocking just at the edge of his mind, but the wall he’s surrounded himself with keeps it out. He’s unraveling those month of work and tracked that cemented his relationship with Daryl. It doesn’t matter anymore. Whether or not they get along, Daryl is still alive. Carl and Judith are alive. He will do whatever it takes to keep them alive. He’ll burn every bridge he has as long as the person standing on the other bank has breath in their lungs.

An old part of him wants Daryl to understand, so he tries to explain this to Daryl the next morning. It’s an incredibly poor choice before he’s even started. But when they stop at a house on a well system he drags Daryl off to the side and puts some words together. Daryl just stares back and makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Man, that’s exactly what those fuckers lived by. You gonna start feeding Judith people when the food runs out?”

“That is different.”

“Yeah, sure.” Daryl shoulders his crossbow, ready to search the woods for food. “An’ somewhere down the line you’ll go back to bein’ Officer Friendly, again. When the shit hits the fan, and it will, you’ll come back to whatever this is.”

Carl comes over carrying Judith, giving Daryl the moment to slip across the clearing and into the trees. Rick’s stomach lurches at the sight of her teething on Carl’s shirt collar. He would never sink that low, but Rick knows Daryl was right about one thing. He’s spent too long flipping between who he wants to be and who he needs to be. He can either be a wholesome father or he can protect his children. He cannot do both. Whatever middle ground Daryl believes exists, will never be possible for Rick.


End file.
